lint-prereqs can improve your prereqs specification in dist.ini by reporting prereqs that are extraneous (specified but unused), missing (used/required but not specified), or incorrect (mismatching version between what's specified in dist.ini vs in source code, incorrect phase like test prereqs specified in runtime, etc).

Sections that will be checked for prereqs include [Prereqs / *], as well as OSPrereqs, Extras/lint-prereqs/Assume-*. Designed to work with prerequisites that are manually written. Does not work if you use AutoPrereqs (using AutoPrereqs basically means that you do not specify prereqs and just use whatever modules are detected by the scanner.)

Sometimes there are prerequisites that you know are used but can't be detected by the scanner, or you want to include anyway. If this is the case, you can instruct lint_prereqs to assume that the prerequisite is used.

;!lint_prereqs assume-used "even though we know it is not currently used"
Foo::Bar=0
;!lint_prereqs assume-used "we are forcing a certain version"
Baz=0.12

Sometimes there are also prerequisites that are detected by scan_prereqs, but are false positives (Perl::PrereqScanner::Lite sometimes does this because its parser is simpler) or you know are already provided by some other modules. So to make lint-prereqs ignore them:

[Extras / lint-prereqs / assume-provided]
Qux::Quux=0

You can also add a [versions] section in your lint-prereqs.conf configuration containing minimum versions that you want for certain modules, e.g.:

[versions]
Bencher=0.30
Log::Any::IfLOG=0.07
...

then if there is a prereq specified less than the minimum versions, lint-prereqs will also complain.

This function is not exported by default, but exportable.

Arguments ('*' denotes required arguments):

core_prereqs => bool (default: 1)

Whether or not prereqs to core modules are allowed.

If set to 0 (the default), will complain if there are prerequisites to core modules. If set to 1, prerequisites to core modules are required just like other modules.

extra_runtime_dirs => array[str]

Add extra directories to scan for runtime requirements.

extra_test_dirs => array[str]

Add extra directories to scan for test requirements.

fix => bool

Attempt to automatically fix the errors.

lint-prereqs can attempt to automatically fix the errors by adding/removing/moving prereqs in dist.ini. Not all errors can be automatically fixed. When modifying dist.ini, a backup in dist.ini~ will be created.

perl_version => str

Perl version to use (overrides scan_prereqs/dist.ini).

scanner => str (default: "regular")

Which scanner to use.

regular means Perl::PrereqScanner which is PPI-based and is the slowest but has the most complete support for Perl syntax.

lite means Perl::PrereqScanner::Lite has uses an XS-based lexer and is the fastest but might miss some Perl syntax (i.e. miss some prereqs) or crash if given some weird code.

First element (status) is an integer containing HTTP status code (200 means OK, 4xx caller error, 5xx function error). Second element (msg) is a string containing error message, or 'OK' if status is 200. Third element (result) is optional, the actual result. Fourth element (meta) is called result metadata and is optional, a hash that contains extra information.